You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a Soul. You have a body, temporarily.
-Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz
Widely-considered a genre classic and garnering a Hugo Award in 1961, A Canticle for Leibowitz was written by ex-US Airforce gunner Walter M. Miller, Jr. It takes the form of three novella-length stories, spanning several millennia of history. These tales are set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, dealing with the aftermath of a massive nuclear war (referred to as ‘the Flame Deluge’). The novel’s action revolves around a Catholic monastery set in the desert of the American southwest, somewhere near Utah. The abbey’s patron saint — a Deluge-era scientist named Leibowitz — is the principal figure of the story, although he does not appear himself. Through him we enter a rich narrative exploring the place of scientific knowledge in a world re-discovering the meaning of ‘civilization’.
The significance of Leibowitz is not merely thematic. In A Canticle, he is attributed with creating a tradition of intellectual bootleggers — around the breakout of the nuclear war — who are responsible for the monks’ collection of rare scientific documents. These individuals would smuggle books, blueprints and other materials to the abbey, during the decades of anti-intellectualism and anti-scientism that followed the holocaust. In this way, they predate the order itself, giving them an impetus. The monks do not understand most of the information they have been charged to preserve. But their ignorance does not diminish their reverence for these documents, and lends a certain tragicomic element to the story.
The juxtaposition of science and Christian faith is the basis for several fertile discussions in the novel — particularly in the later sections. Nor does the setting bias the narrative. Miller is a decidedly non-religious thinker, who introduces scientists and other characters to act as devil’s advocates. He does not hide his own intellectual pretensions: some dialogue is written in Latin, some in German, and the book is thematically ambitious — attempting to address the ethical imperatives of both religion and science. Nevertheless, Miller is ultimately cynical about science’s ability to police itself. The problem of nuclear weapons is his recurring example.
Any reader of Leibowitz should be aware of the effect caused by Miller’s participation in the 1944 destruction of the Monte Cassino abbey, during the American WWII campaign in Italy. The bombing of Monte Cassino was a piece of gross incompetence on the part of American military, resulting in the deaths of 230 innocence Italian civilians, when the building was mistaken as an important Axis outpost. Miller personally participated in this mission — an involvement that was apparently traumatic for him. In many ways, these real-world events prefigure the story of A Canticle for Leibowitz (the only novel published during Miller’s lifetime), foreshadowing the book’s inevitable conclusion.
Miller’s portrait of post-apocalyptic Earth betrays a cyclical understanding of history, as a vicious cycle doomed to repeat itself. At the same time, A Canticle is imbued with a subtle humour, unfolding the dimensions of human passion and folly. It is immensely readable: from a debate over euthanasia (on the eve of nuclear war) to the recurring figure of an immortal Jewish nomad — the novel never ceases to delight with its imagination. Miller’s own experiences may have given him a cynical perspective on history, but they have not left him without hope. A Canticle for Leibowitz probes the intersection of religion, science and ethics in provocative fashion, remaining fully relevant a half-century after its publication.
